George Tsebelis distinguished two forms of veto players’ actions: institutional and partisan. In a democracy, the Church is not able to play either role because it is not an element of the state’s institutional structure. This was the source for Simon Fink’s proposal to look at the Church as a societal veto player (VP). The case of Poland shows, however, that such an approach becomes inadequate in numerous situations. The Church’s influence on political parties, and particularly the state’s institutions, may be exerted outside society. Performed on the basis of the existing literature and political debates conducted since 1989, the analysis of the social and political reality of Poland allows us to indicate the following four issues with respect to which the role of the Church as a VP The Church acted most often as a quasi-institutional VP (five cases), and once as a quasi-partisan VP. It never took actions based primarily on mobilizing society. This undermines the universality of findings and indicates the necessity of reconsidering the role of churches as societal veto players.

George Tsebelis 区分了两种形式的否决权人的行动：制度性和党派性。在民主国家，教会不能扮演任何一个角色，因为它不是国家体制结构的一个组成部分。这就是 Simon Fink 提议将教会视为社会否决者 (VP) 的来源。然而，波兰的案例表明，这种方法在许多情况下都不够用。教会对政党，尤其是国家机构的影响可能会在社会之外发挥作用。在现有文献和自 1989 年以来进行的政治辩论的基础上进行，对波兰社会和政治现实的分析使我们能够指出以下四个问题，即教会作为副总统的作用准党派副总裁。它从来没有采取主要基于动员社会的行动。这破坏了调查结果的普遍性，并表明有必要重新考虑教会作为社会否决者的作用。